Does difficulty of UG courses affect my chances?

I personally agree with you, but for those that are obsessed with rankings there are shortcuts. However, I took advanced appellate advocacy in law school. By far the hardest class I ever took and there were only two students in it. I was able to produce two great writing samples in law school, and what I learned in that class has been a tremendous help, although I got a B the experience was well worth it.

Essentially, floating by in school to get b.s. A's is not the best way to do it in my opinion, but there are certainly people and entities (law school) being one of them that will reward you for fluff over substance.

Getting back to the OP's original question, LSAC does weight grades according to the perceived level of difficulty of both the individual class and the institution. Thus, a grade in Astrophysics from Cal Tech is supposedly weighted more than History of Romantic Comedies at Unknown State U.

The question is, how much?

I think that a degree in Physics or Chemistry is probably taken more seriously by adcomms just because they are fairly rare. They probably stand out among the slew of English, Business, and Poly Sci degrees. But, law schools are so obsessed with rankings that a 3.5 in Nonesense Studies still probably wins over a 3.0 in Math.

Regarding your point, Maintain, it has been a while since my UG experience and LSAC experience, but my recollection is as follows:

1. The weighted uGPA matters a great deal. That is to say, the uGPA you have as compared to your school's (average) GPA. I went to a relatively non-GPA inflated school, so while my uGPA was, well, pretty mediocre, my weighted institutional uGPA was quite good. And my experience working with (one) admissions office is that the weighted uGPA (by undergraduate school) matters.

2. IIRC, back in the day, they broke out your "major" GPA as well, but I don't recall them breaking out class-specific weighted grades (they didn't get that granular). Maybe it's different now. The admissions office I worked with didn't care as much about that, with some exceptions (STEM majors tended to get the benefit of the doubt, as opposed to yet another PoliSci major).

This is from a while back, so someone else might have more updated info.

EDIT- I just looked at the LSAC website- they no longer weigh the scores. They do convert, but undergrad difficulty etc. doesn't matter.

Getting back to the OP's original question, LSAC does weight grades according to the perceived level of difficulty of both the individual class and the institution. Thus, a grade in Astrophysics from Cal Tech is supposedly weighted more than History of Romantic Comedies at Unknown State U.

The question is, how much?

I think that a degree in Physics or Chemistry is probably taken more seriously by adcomms just because they are fairly rare. They probably stand out among the slew of English, Business, and Poly Sci degrees. But, law schools are so obsessed with rankings that a 3.5 in Nonesense Studies still probably wins over a 3.0 in Math.

HOW do they do this? What formula? Do you have any link to this?I know you are right about almost everything you say, so I my gut is normally to trust you at word value, but this smells foul as week old fish left in a MO outhouse outside of Jerrys Dinner at noon in July the day after taco Tuesday.

Take a look at LSAC's site, maybe they explain it. When I applied to law school in 2008 LSAC definitely weighted your GPA. Don't know if they still do. It was shown on my LSAC report as GPA/Weighted GPA.

Loki, you are correct. I don't think they weighted individual classes, I'm probably wrong about that. I think it was your GPA/Major GPA. So still, a degree in Physics would presumably get a boost over a degree in Art.

LSAC weighted GPA is just the GPA as analyzed by them and that's how it was in 2008. It does not reflect the perceived quality of your undergraduate institution or major. While some law schools reportedly applied their own formulae to the GPA in the '90s based on school and indexed that with LSAT, the only LSAC-generated GPA is the one that counts no passes as fails and excludes certain classes not considered to be academic.